Raise Your Leadership Lid

If you own a business or you are planning on starting one, you really need to invest your time and effort into becoming and learning to be a leader.  I know you have heard that leaders are born not created but that is not true.  Yes...some people are born with the natural ability to lead but some of the greatest leaders in history were not born that way but they grew into it.

I talk to business owners all the time who have never picked up a book on leadership or went to any type of seminar on how to be a good leader.  I cannot emphasize enough the need to learn good principals of leadership because the fact is that it will save you time, conflict and money in the long run.

There are tons of great books on leadership and you cannot go wrong at all with John Maxwell's materials.  They are in my opinion the best around.  I would begin with his book "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership."  It was one of those laws I titled this post with...Raising Your Leadership Lid.

You see, some people have a leadership lid of 5 while really great leaders have a leadership lid of say 10 on a scale of 1 to 10.  If you have a leadership lid of 5, then those under you can only rise to a 4.  So if you are going to improve the quality of those under you, you have to raise your leadership lid.

You need to be pushing yourself to come up a little higher in your leadership.  I here business owners complain all the time that the people that work for them are not up to par and want take initiative.  However, when I stop to observe them, they are not up to par and they don't take initiative either.  They think that somehow because they are the owner or manager of a business that they have arrived at the appex yet they struggle to succeed and are unhappy.

One thing I know for sure is that when you learn new things and you challenge yourself to rise to another level, you develop a greater sense of well-being and personal expansion.  The mind was meant to be challenged and is the greatest super computer on the planet.  Some experts say that we only use about 10% of our minds real capabilities. 

If your struggling in your business and personal life, maybe it is time for a challenge and I am not talking about the ones you are currently facing.  It maybe that if you seek to raise your leadership skills that you will discover solutions to the problems you are facing now. 

I want to encourage to start to do something now.  Get a book on leadership and go through like a text book.  Take notes and write down areas of application and then take action.

It's time to raise the lid on your leadership.

The Ever Changing Face of Internet Marketing

How To Make Money Online

That's right...like tens of thousands of others, I typed that very phrase into a search engine sometime ago and now many years later, I continue to make money online and love it.  The first money I made online was not selling a product.  I made my first money online trading options and some stocks.  I did it using dial-up and I also did a lot of praying in those days.  You had to pay out the wazoo to get real time quotes and it was much more difficult then than it is today.

Then like many others, I graduated to Ebay.  I started buying and selling on Ebay and got hooked on making money off everyday items, junk around the house and so forth.  One day I noticed this guy selling these barebones computer systems really cheap and so I bought one and assembled a computer and sold it for a small profit.  I thought this was pretty cool so I did it again.  I then called the manufacturer of those barebones systems and asked to go direct with them and they said no.  I then hammered them for months until the consented to sell about 10 machines instead of 50.

I soon was selling computers to everyone around and a business was born out of that which grew beyond my wildest dreams.  I business I sold for a nice profit later on in 2004.

Making money online went to the next level

I had been making money online mostly with physical products and I still do that till this day.  However, one day I passed a magazine rack and picked up a magazine called "Millionaire Blueprints."  It was an unusual magazine and when I opened it up, I began to read about people making money online selling their knowledge.  I thought to myself, "this shouldn't be to hard for me as my mother had told me repeatedly I was a 'know it all."  The thought of selling things I knew about was very exciting to me.  So I started crafting my first information products and started selling them.  Some were ebooks and some were physical books that I self published. 

This is still a great way to make money online and now it has grown to include selling videos, audios, graphics, templates and so much more.  Our goal was to educate and put tools into the hands of our customers so they could make money and change their lives.

Now we have taken our internet marketing skills to another level by helping local businesses acquire more customers and clients using the techniques we developed early on in our marketing endeavors.  These are tried and proven techniques that help us get into the minds of the potential client or customer and deliver the information they are wanting.

It boils down to education

Internet marketing has come to the place that in order to be effective, we must educate.  We use information products or services in order to do this.  It may be a video about a product, service or practice area.  It may be a series of podcast that inform potential buyers of the benefits of a product or service in small digestible pieces in order for them to retain that information.  It could by downloadable whitepapers or DVD's that demonstrate the value and abilities of a product or service.  The possibilities go on and on.

If we are going to be effective marketers, we need to seek to educate.  By educating potential customers, we are positioning ourselves as the experts and go to persons in our markets.  Positioning creates authority in a market and those seen as the authority, get the business.

Make it a goal to educate.  Put your best information out there and see if you don't fill your funnel with raving fans and people that love you for a long time.

Length of Content Changing The Rules

If you have been in internet marketing very long or have any type of a web presence, you have heard the phrase "content is king."  Nothing could be more truer especially in light of recent updates by Google.  Google is now scrutinizing page and link relevance more than ever.  They are looking at your pages content and the content on the pages linking to you for authority and relevance. 

This means that our content strategies are going to have to be taken up a notch in order for us to the rankings we want to get.  We used to able to rank content that was 300 to 500 words in length but now that is not the case. Recent studies have shown that out of the sites that appear in the search results for the top 20,000 keywords and phrases, the top ten results had an average of 2000 or more words on the page.  We have known for years that long copy out performs short copy and this is further proof.

Why long copy is best?

Let me explain why long copy is what the search engines are looking for.  When it comes to writing content, it is fairly easy to crank out 500 word articles all day long, but writing 1000, 1500, 2000 or 2500 words is more difficult.  They consider the longer content to be more authoritative and better researched than the shorter content which is true of course.  Another recent study showed that content with 1500 words or more got more likes, tweets, retweets and links that copy shorter than 1500 words.  Not only that, it had a much higher return on investment.

The conversion rate specialist over at http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/, revamped the landing page for SEOMoz for their Pro level offering.  Before, it was a much shorter copy that converted but not and really great numbers.  They discovered that when the owner of SEOmoz did a presentation for the Pro level of service they offer that it took several minutes for him to really give a quality presentation yet the page could be scanned in a minute or so.  So by creating longer copy the reflected the length of a presentation with several conversion elements in the copy, SEOmoz gained significantly higher conversions adding $1million to their bottom line in a year.

Adding more content to your site

I recently watched as a couple of website owner I know took down two of their websites and took all the content from those two sites and put it all on their main site.  Their main site went from 158 pages of indexed content to over 500.  When I ran a report on their site the following month, they had gone from 64 positions in the SERPS to 232...all from adding content to their site.  They did no backlinking to the content.  They only took the well written content and added to their site and the rankings for specific phrases immediately increased.

We have done this with several of our sites including taking shorter content and combining with other shorter content and seen websites that had hardly no positioning begin to flourish and rank just by adding longer and more copy.

It is imperative that you get a really great content strategy.  Put your best content on your site and they use video, article directories, web 2.0 and social sites to distribute other content linking back to your site.  Adding great content on a weekly basis is a must for you and your business.

Call us if you have questions about your content strategy...337-303-2841

Pretty Or Effective - Website Design That Works

I here it all the time, "I have a beautiful website but I just don't understand why I am not getting any business off of it."  Sometimes we tell people they need an update to the look of their site and they reply, "but I like my site and the way it looks."  I then ask what kind of return on investment they are getting and if they are getting new customers or clients as a result.  Most of the time the reply is, "no, I have not get any new and real customers but it sure is pretty."  See anything wrong with this picture.

Pretty or Effective

One of the hardest things we have to do internet marketing is combine the look and feel of a website with making it really effective and making it where it gets optimum conversions.  In the minds of most people, a website with really great esthetics is one that will convert but that it is pretty far from the truth.  Our experience has shown that the look, although it has some importance, is not hands down what makes a site convert.

You see, we hear a lot about traffic and the need for traffic to our sites and that is important, but when they get there, if they don't take action, what good is the traffic.  So conversion measures have to be taken in order to get the results from our websites we want. 

What Top Converting Websites Do

Here are a few things that the top converting websites do:

• The make their "Unique Value Proposition" clear.  What is your message in a few short words that you want your potential clients to get when they land on your site.
• The test call to actions.  If you don't have a call to action, that is the first mistake.  If you don't test them, that is the second.  A website is never done.  You must measure and adjust.
• They test their headlines.  The headline on a page is very important.  If you are using wordpress this is normally the title of the page or post.  Sometimes you may want to put the headline in the body of the page if it is too long for the title area.
• Keep contact and leadgen forms short.  Conversion rates go down if a potential client has too much information to fill in on the form.
• They have colorful "Share" icons.  Make it easier for the visitor to share your content by having bold and colorful social media icons.
• The segment users.  By this I mean that if they have products or services geared more toward women, they make the content and the look appeal to women.  The same holds true for men.  This is also applied to people with different interest.
• Conversions can be increased with big call to action buttons within the content.  
• The use of video increases conversions substantially.  We implore this strategy in our design:  great written content to attract the search rankings...video to improve conversions.

One of the highest converting websites we have is not very attractive at all.  It gathers leads for dentist who treat sleep apnea.  The site is designed to invoke pain and dissatisfaction about wearing the CPAP.  This sites conversion rates are amazing because it does what it was designed to do.

Web design must be done with the target audience in mind.  What emotion do you want to invoke from them.  What pain are the experiencing and how can your product or service fix it.  What problem does it solve.  All these things lead to greater conversions.

So if your website is not converting, you may not have the right elements for conversion.  We can give you a free evaluation of your site to help you get better conversions.  For more information, visit Reddoch Media Groups Web Design Page.  

What's Your Local Marketing Plan

Local Internet Marketing 

Most small businesses make a grave mistake by not having a local marketing plan.  Most go into business with no real plan of how they will grow and succeed.  They normally end up struggling and wondering why they are not getting new customers in the door on a more consistent pace.  The deal is they have not developed a sales funnel for doing so.

Marketing does not mean you find as many ways as you can to get your business publicity.  What it does mean is you first develop a message, identify who you want to here that message, then deliver that message in varied forms to that audience.  This requires some planning and brainstorming.  Most like to skip this and just go with what everyone else is doing.  The problem is when you do what everyone else is doing, you are going to get what everyone else is getting.  Your marketing must be designed to present you as being different.

A Short But Humorous Story

There were three businesses in a mall with similar products.  They were all three side by side and they constantly where trying to out do the other.  One day, one of them decides to have a huge sale and he had posters with offers printed up and put all across the front of the store.  One of the others got upset and so he did the same thing and got bigger posters talking about their big sale.  The guy in the middle of these two was perplexed about what to do.  One on one side with big signs and the other one on the other side with big sales posters and both had special lights and music going.  How do you compete.  So the store owner in the middle thought to himself, "how do I compete with this?"  So he had an idea.  He called the printer and had some posters printed up also and he put them right by his front door...they said "Entrance."   I love that.

Rather than do what the others did, he got creative.  He capitalized on what they were doing in a big way.  If you and I are going to succeed, we need to think out of the box.  Don't do what every body else is doing.  Find other ways to bring your message to your audience but observe what the others are doing and be different.

We will be glad to help you with a plan at Reddoch Media Group.  Give us a call today.

The Two Reasons You Will Market Your Business

 What Kind Of Thinker Are You

Often times I go into a business and sit down and talk with a manager or business owner and I hear these words, "I cannot afford to do any advertising or marketing.  Times are hard and the economy has really effected my business."  I am sure someone reading this has said that or knows someone who has. 

I want you to stop and think about that for a minute.  Let's suppose you own a furniture store in your city and you think that way.  How many other furniture stores are in your market area?  Do you think any of them are thinking that way also?  Are there any that seem to be moving forward and doing well?  I can guarantee you this, that the ones not going forward and not making money are the ones that think they cannot afford to market and the ones who are making money think they can and they do it.

You see, you will ultimately market your business for two reasons:  One is to grow it and the other is to sell it.  I know that seems tongue and cheek but it is the truth.  It all has to do with your thinking.

Let's suppose you are one of five furniture stores in your area.  You are all experiencing the same economic conditions in that area.  Yet one of these is thriving more than the others.  Why?  I know your probably thinking of several external reasons why like they may have a better location or more capital on hand...or...could it be they chose to use their resources to grow and expand rather than focusing on what they may be lacking.

The problem with most business owners is they constantly focus on what they don't have and what they perceive as a disadvantage rather than focusing on the strengths they have and capitalizing on them.  I know this for a fact.

When I started in business here in Lafayette, Louisiana, I had no prospects, no money, no office and knew nobody.  I came here to work with another guy and his company went down hill and I was left basically stranded.  My wife said "what are we going to do?"  I told her I was going to get up and go out and start doing what I do best and that was sell my skill set.  So I did and today I have a thriving business that has no debt and I have a nice office in a good location. 

I didn't spend time focusing on what I didn't have.  Rather, I focused on what I did have and I acted upon some really creative ideas I had and things started coming together. 

Stop and think about it.  If you think you can't afford to move forward, how many of the other guys in your market thinking the same thing.  Probably more than half to three quarters of them.  That means you have an opportunity to pull ahead when others pull back out of fear.  Don't let economic setbacks pull you into a life of fear because fear is like a cancer...it will spread through your entire life very quickly and before you know it, everything around you is falling apart.

Make up your mind today that you are going to push ahead.  Don't procrastinate or make excuses.  Take action.  Get creative and leave your competition in the dust.

Turn Off The Sewer Drip Of Bad Information

You Will Market Your Business For Two Reasons

Every time you turn on the news these days or pick up some other new publication, all you seem to here is about how bad it is and slow growth.  For most business owners, this can become overwhelming hearing all the negative mumbo jumbo that is out there.  To be honest, I don't even listen to that stuff anymore even if it comes from my favorite news network.

I have been around for a while and have grown a few very successful businesses and did it in what others where saying were not very good economies.  I grew one business to a very large size in the delta area of Louisiana which is predominately farming communities and totally defied the odds and defied what everyone else was telling could not and would not happen.

You have to think different

Now, it's not that I am some kind of genius with a high IQ or anything like that, but I am an out of the box forward type of thinker.  I am what I call and think others have called an "Idea Entrepreneur."  All great accomplishments started with ideas, a formulated belief system and then action on that belief system.  This is what set me apart from the "can't doers."

If you are going to succeed at anything, especially business, you cannot move with the masses and what I mean by that is simply doing what everybody else is doing.  If you do what everybody else is doing, then your competition is going to be stronger because you are trying to compete on the same playing field as a hundred others in your niche market.  That is why you have to be different.  You have to do things the competition is not even considering. 

You can sit around and just maintain if you want to.  However, business owners who are in maintenance mode all the time begin to burn out over time.  That come down with a disease called "mundane."

You see, when your business is growing and thriving, it produces a level of joy and excitement that fuels your creative juices.  It pushes you to be on the cutting edge.  As one person said, "it will make you charge hell with a water pistol and swing out over the flames on a corn stalk and spit in the devils eye." 

You have to see yourself as an innovator and not a prisoner of the economy.  When others are whining, you are coming up with strategies to push a head in the market and you are seizing opportunities when others are letting them pass by.

I want to encourage you today to turn off the sewer drip of bad information.  Don't feed on the rhetoric of news people and politicians who have grown comfortable behind a desk and have no real desire to change things for the better.  It's up to you to make the difference.

If you need help getting your business or life unstuck out of the goo of bad information, then call our office today at 337-303-2841 or visit our main website at Reddoch Media Group.

Video Marketing That Makes An Impact

Why Use Video Marketing?

 I am sure that most of you have been to a movie theater at some point in your life and if you haven't you have probably watched at home but there is something unique about the theater experience.  Everything that happens from the time you walk in and you take your seat is a marketing message.  The sites, sounds, images and movie trailers are designed to engage you and your emotions and motivate you to take certain actions.
Everything is designed to get your attention and keep it.

We live in the attention economy and everyone with a marketing message is bidding for your attention and there is no other medium for getting attention like video.  Video has a way of connecting with the human emotion like no other media out there.  Video can influence your emotions so powerfully that it can bring you to tears without one word being said or make you laugh with a sequence of clips that tell a humorous story.  It pulls on your emotions so strongly that when you leave the theater, you almost immediately begin to voice opinions over what you saw based on the emotions it pulled out of you.

Video Marketing Makes A Connection With Your Audience

It is a proven statistical fact that most of the people that use the internet would rather watch something rather than read it and for you who are using video or thinking about using video marketing, this gives you a huge advantage in your market over your competitors who don't.  On the other hand, if you are not using video to market your business and build your brand, you are leaving value on the table and giving your competitors an advantage. 

Think about this:  What if you started doing regular video of your products and services and you showcased them in a way that connects with them on a more personal level, what do you think the response would be.  I cannot tell you how many times people chose to do business with me based on the information that received in a video.  They would say things like "that video summed up and answered my questions before I even called you."  It connected with them and helped them make a decision.

This is one of the reasons our company focuses on helping you have a solid video marketing strategy.  We help you know how to communicate your message in a way that engages potential clients and customers.  We have the tools available to make an impact on your website visitors that sets you apart from your competition.

If you are interested in video marketing and how it can help you, visit our website at Reddoch Media Group and we will be glad to help you get the exposure you need to compete in this new economy.